Is The Legendary Mechanic worth reading?

Is The Legendary Mechanic worth reading? Put the question to system-novel readers and The Legendary Mechanic (超神机械师) is the one they name with a grin, followed by a shrug about the second half.

What The Legendary Mechanic is

A sci-fi game-world novel whose hero is on the wrong side of the screen. Han Xiao was a professional power-leveler in a galactic MMO called Galaxy, and he wakes up inside it as an NPC, a year before the public beta lets the players in. He keeps his status panel. He knows every quest, every hidden dungeon and every faction's fate, and he spends his head start becoming the kind of NPC he used to farm: a mechanic who hands out missions, teaches skills and builds machines. The story opens on Planet Aquamarine, where Han Xiao is an experiment inside the Germinal Organization and the first use he finds for his knowledge is getting out. When the players finally log in, they're his customers, his army and his comedy.

What readers love

The angle. Everyone has read about a player trapped in a game; almost nobody has read about the NPC who knows the players are coming and opens a shop. Han Xiao's dry, scheming, faintly bored inner voice, which turns the usual power fantasy into a long con. And the jokes about the players, whose forum posts and guild squabbles are written with the affection of someone who has clearly been one.

Is The Legendary Mechanic worth reading for you?

Readers split on the long middle. The first great arc, Han Xiao against the organization that made him, is the stretch most people call the best. After that the story widens to a galaxy, and some readers say it loses its shape, one faction war after another with the players fading into background noise. There's no romance, by the hero's own decision, and readers who wanted one call the book cold. Others say that's the joke.

The book is at its best when Han Xiao is small and the game is big, and that's a hard feeling to keep once he's a legend. Even so, the first five hundred chapters are some of the smartest fun the system genre has produced, and the machine-building has a tinkerer's pleasure that most cheat novels skip. Read it for the setup, and decide about the galaxy when you get there.

Based on reader reviews; we'll write our own once we've finished it.

If you enjoy it, support the author where it's published: Qidian. Licensed English edition: Webnovel.